stares wildly toward the half-opened door. Oswald is heard coughing and humming inside.)
Manders (excited). What in the world is the
matter? What is it, Mrs. Alving?
Mrs. Alving (hoarsely). Ghosts! the couple
from the conservatory has risen again!
Ghosts, indeed! Mrs. Alving sees this but too clearly
when she discovers that though she did not want Oswald
to inherit a single penny from the purchase money Captain Alving
had paid for her, all her sacrifice did not save Oswald
from the poisoned heritage of his father. She learns soon enough
that her beloved boy had inherited a terrible disease from his
father, as a result of which he will never again be able to work.
She also finds out that, for all her freedom, she has remained
in the clutches of Ghosts, and that she has fostered in Oswald's mind an ideal of his father, the more terrible because of
her own loathing for the man. Too late she realizes her fatal
mistake:
Mrs. Alving. I ought never to have concealed
the facts of Alving's life. But . . . in my superstitious awe for Duty and Decency I lied to my boy, year after year. Oh! what a coward, what a coward I have been! . . . Ghosts! When I heard Regina and Oswald in there, it was as though I saw the Ghosts before me. But I almost think we are all of us Ghosts, Pastor Manders. It is not only what we have inherited from our father and mother that "walks" in us. It is all sorts of dead
